The history of media art is rooted in numerous disciplines. Often these histories are understood as coinciding with the technical, social, or artistic spheres. Yet it is clear that the development of media (broadly speaking) is joined with communication, representation, invention, science, and with speculative worlds, imaginary communities, and experiences that demand broader approaches to historiography. Though it is convenient to trace the development of ‘media art' in relation to particular technologies (and more and more to specific softwares), a more reasoned approach is evolving as a ‘media archaeology’ that attempts to understand the historical stages in which technologies have corresponded with social and artistic transformations and to realize the reverberating effects these have had on contemporary practices. The panel will especially focus on the reciprocal relationship between media practice and media theory.